Yes, I'd look at either git or mercurial -- they are a bit more modern than SVN.

Not sure what you mean by integrate with the FTP client, but I think that is a separate problem than SCM. Once you get SCM going right, you probably should ditch dreamweaver FTP and setup something that pulls directly from SCM.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm just looking for the smoothest transition to this software for all parties (we have a handful of users already doing stuff, though they aren't used to source control software).

I personally, as well as others, use Dreamweaver's upload-on-save feature which makes testing on a remote server much quicker. It'd be nice if we were still able to use that.

I was looking at git. Has anyone ever used SourceOffSite? We use this already for a different area of development and the head of our IT department would like to keep it all on one server. Does it work well enough?

Whoever is using sourcesafe in 2011 really should have read this a long time ago. I really wouldn't recommend it in any case for technical reasons. And in 2011 there really isn't a reason to pay anything other than hosting costs for source control -- the FOSS solutions are perhaps the bestest and most mature until you are building something on the scale of, say, windows.

As for the dreamweaver FTP feature, I think any of these solutions would work with it. If it is actually testing on a remote test server (bad mojo, but that is another debate) then you probably want to save/test then commit to the repository once you are done.

As for tools and such, if you are on windows I would probably shade towards mercurial over git. Main reason is that windows tooling is quite a bit better and more mature and features are on par in general. Hosting-wise, bitbucket private repos are a lot cheaper than github private repos. The $298 for the first license of that source-un-safe product could get you a 25 user private account over there and leave enough left over for a beer or three.

If you are committed to git, at least on windows the tools are a bit ugly. Git for windows is your only realistic option and it is definitely a bit limited and a bit ugly. But it definitely works in most cases.

I wouldn't bother with a graphical interface - there is a good reason that the command line has persisted to this day. It's great for things like source control that requires extremely clear and crispy instructions rather than pretty pictures.

If you invest a couple of hour in getting comfortable at the command line, it will be worth your while.

I likely will use command line for most things (I spend half my day in putty, so they're no problem for me). However, we do have a couple of non-developers that will need to be able to change things as well (such as images), so we'll need a simple graphical editor for them to be able to replace files.

Why not TortoiseGit? It's not as polished and mature as TortoiseSVN but it gets the job done and can be perfect for non-developers who are scared of command line and need to perform some basic operations.

I've been looking at TortoiseGit, Git Extension, and SmartGit. All three look pretty decent. We're going to give Git Extension a go first, and if it doesn't have everything we want, look at the others.

I think in most cases SVN is more than enough. Also, I used to hate using IBM's ClearCase until I worked w/ a team who actually used it correctly (Yes, I used ClearCase like SVN but apparently their philosophy is very different). As of now, I must say ClearCase is the most robust SCM but like I said 99% of the time SVN is good enough.

I'm a ClearCase admin and I would agree that it is, by far the most capable and feature rich source control system available. That said, it's usually overkill for all but the most complex, distributed, etc. projects.

If you need help determining whether you need ClearCase I can probably help you with that. Keep in mind that CC is quite expensive and will require some real training and support to use it effectively.

I'd generally contend that in 2011 there isn't a reason to use a commercial SCM product in almost any case. Your project isn't going to be as complex, distributed or big as the linux kernel, which is precisely the set of requirements that begat git and hg.

Well, other than being on huge public sector projects and needing some entity to throw under the bus when SCM fails.